A roadmap that connects up to strategy and down to the work

A feature⭐featureA product capability or feature carries edges in both directions. It addresses a need🫀needA user need, pain, desire, or constraint and a job🔨jobJob To Be Done: what the user is trying to accomplish, it drives a key result📈key_resultA measurable result tied to an objective, and it tests a hypothesis🧪hypothesisA testable belief about a solution. Those are typed links back into discovery and strategy, so the roadmap connects to the why behind each feature, not only the what.

That makes prioritisation legible. A feature with a clear need and a key result behind it sorts to the top; a feature with neither shows up as a candidate to cut. RICE, MoSCoW, and Now-Next-Later read as lenses over these links rather than another list to keep in sync.

A feature⭐featureA product capability or feature is decomposed into an epic📜epicA large body of work that can be broken into stories, an epic is specified by user story💬user_storyA structured story statement capturing a user's goal and the value they expect to receive, in the "As a… I want… So that…" format. nodes, and the feature also decomposes into the task☑️taskA unit of work within a story or epic nodes an engineer picks up. Each level is a typed node, not a heading in a doc.

So scope is a traversal. The question of what a release contains walks epic to story to task; the question of what is left on an epic counts its open tasks. The breakdown lives in one place instead of being re-entered in a tracker that drifts from the spec.

The user story💬user_storyA structured story statement capturing a user's goal and the value they expect to receive, in the "As a… I want… So that…" format. is the unit of agreement. An epic📜epicA large body of work that can be broken into stories is specified by the stories that make it concrete, and each story is verified by the acceptance criterion✅acceptance_criterionA condition that must be met for a story to be done nodes that say when it is done.

So “is this finished?” resolves to a checklist the graph already holds rather than a debate in review. The acceptance criteria written when the story was shaped are the same ones QA checks against, because they are the same nodes.

Work decomposes to the smallest pickup-able unit: a task☑️taskA unit of work within a story or epic implements a user story💬user_storyA structured story statement capturing a user's goal and the value they expect to receive, in the "As a… I want… So that…" format. and has subtasks. The thing that holds it up is itself typed: a dependency⛓️dependencyA cross-team or system dependency depends on one team🫂teamA cross-functional team and blocks another.

So a cross-team blocker is a node with edges, visible the moment it is created. Asking what is blocked, and on which team, is a traversal rather than a round of the status meeting.

A milestone⛳milestoneA key date or achievement marks a moment of strategic significance and triggers the release🚢releaseA shipped version of the product that meets it. The release contains the feature⭐featureA product capability or feature nodes that ship together and is documented in a changelog🕰️changelogA record of changes shipped in a release the team and customers read from the same source.

So the changelog is generated from what the release actually contains rather than written from memory at the end of the sprint. What shipped, and the milestone it served, are both one traversal away.

A strategic theme🧵strategic_themeA high-level strategic focus area for a planning period is realised by a roadmap theme🎨roadmap_themeA customer problem used as the organising unit of a roadmap, which groups the feature⭐featureA product capability or feature nodes that deliver it and spans the feature area📁feature_areaA grouping of related features they live in. This is the edge most planning tools leave implicit.

So the roadmap is the strategy projected onto the work. Every theme on the roadmap names the strategic theme it serves, and every feature under it inherits that line of sight all the way up to the vision.